Steve Forbes is going dancing.
The former Barton men’s basketball coach will be taking East Tennessee State University to the NCAA Tournament next week.
Forbes earned his first taste of the tournament when his Buccaneers won the Southern Conference post season tournament Monday night. East Tennessee State defeated North Carolina Greensboro in the title game, 79-74.
The Buccaneers are 27-7 on the season and are probably looking at a seed anywhere from No. 12-14.
In just his second year at ETSU, Forbes has taken a team that had a 16-14 record is 2014-15 and were a combined 62-65 in the four seasons before his arrival to back-to-back 20-win seasons and now the school’s first NCAA Tournament in seven years.
He has done so by overhauling the roster for the Bucs. Only four players remain from the roster the year before he arrived, just three that play significant minutes.
The leading scorer, TJ Cromer, Forbes brought in from Columbia State Community College. Tevin Glass, the team’s top rebounder, played for Coach Forbes at Northwest Florida State CC, followed Forbes to Wichita State, where he played one season then transferred to ETSU when Forbes got the job there.
Hanner Mosquera-Perea, a starter in all 34 games and the team’s top shot-blocker, transferred from Indiana when Forbes took over. Both Perea and Glass had to sit out their initial seasons after transferring.
The teams’ sixth man, David Burrell, is another junior college that Forbes brought in. Burrell came from Southwest Tennessee CC. In all, five of the seven leading scorers are new since Forbes took over.
The Bucs and Coach Forbes will find out Sunday where and when the team will play. The closest venue for the Bucs would be Greenville, SC. That would be a two hour trip south from Johnson City, the home of ETSU.